Re: [Ndiswrapper-general] Loading via pcmcia cardmanager

[Pontus F. <pon...@ta...>]

On Thu, 2004-03-18 at 14:26, Oliver Friedrich wrote:

> Ok, than we are back at the start of this discussion ;)
> How to tell the cardmanager (i think, part of the hotplug subsystem) to
> load the ndiswrapper module or signal an already loaded ndiswrapper
> module to load a new windows driver if needed?

A normal kernel module knows what driver it supports and declares this
in the source. This information is used to create a /lib/modules/`uname
-r`/modules.pcimap file which the hotplug-scripts can use to find the
correct module for some pci-device. The problem is that ndiswrapper does
not know in advance which cards it will support because we dynamically
load the windows drivers. However you can manually edit the pcimap file
if you feel like it. There are probably other smarter ways do do this
but I leave that for somebody else to investigate.

> 
> Perhaps the last point is not complicated to implement, because it
> seems, that the ndiswrapper recognizes the reinsert of an already loaded
> card and reinit the formerly loaded driver.
> Does the ndiswrapper get a general notification by the kernel that new
> hardware was detected or does the kernel only notifify the specific
> module for this hardware if loaded? If it is a general notification,
> than ndiswrapper could check, if it has a windows driver for it and load
> it additionally to an already initilized driver ...

Upon module loading ndiswrapper loads all installed drivers. After this
we register with the PCI-subsystem as usual so as soon as a hotpluggable
card (for example cardbus) is inserted we get notified the normal way.

Pontus